221–230 of 298 posts
Stop paying these racket companies and their dumbass contracts. The DIY is totally easy.
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That’s because government subsidies always have to be twisted into the shape of a tax cut to avoid triggering low information voters.
Huh? Electric car subsidies were just that, subsidies (i.e. Tesla cars were cheaper).
https://www.energy.gov/eere/electricvehicles/electric-vehicl...
>Supporting renewable energy is important, and I get spending a little more to help the planet. But a for-profit company like Sunrun wasn’t my idea of the right place to do it. That's a pretty strange sentiment. 20 years ago, solar was decidedly more expensive than it is now. A fair price would be higher than grid power. For the installation to have occurred at all, the up front capital cost had to be amortized by a…
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How do you calculate savings at the 11-year mark? If you'd invested the same amount in index funds over an 11 year period you'd see your money double in an approximately 10 year period.
We have kept records of the power we've consumed, the power we've generated, the cost of the system and the cost of repairs/maintenance (one panel and one inverter so far over its lifetime). For the financial analysis we assumed the money would be committed to paying for power one way or the other, there isn't really an option for putting it aside in the mutual fund so the 'invest' option was off the table. With the…
Plugging the figures into: https://smartasset.com/personal-loans/personal-loan-calculat... and adjusting the interest rate slider you get a monthly payment of $217 when the interest rate is 11.75%. That's a pretty good rate of return for your investment. Not ridiculous, but solid.
Here's a cautionary tale of purchasing a home with solar panels, even if they're not leased from a third party. We bought a house with solar panels in 2016. The seller had purchased the system less than a year before the house went on the market, and one of the key selling points was that there was no lease to deal with; by purchasing the home, we would 100% own the solar panels and would reap all the benefits of wha…
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True, you’ll still have your 80% but that will be compared to the state of the art at the time as a trade off. The production of contemporary panels should (hopefully) be much much better. Imagine the advances in the next 2 decades: higher efficiency, lighter weight, more module, standards we can’t conceive of. Like the other poster in this thread said: sure your Athlon 500mhz is still runninnfine, even at 80% effici…
I'm a bit disappointed in your response. Did you look up Shockley–Queisser ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockley%E2%80%93Queisser_limi... )? The maximum theoretical single p-n junction efficiency is low 30%s. Sunpower is the best consumer grade product and they are in the low 20%s right now ( https://us.sunpower.com/products/solar-panels/ ). There is not that room for improvement. There are higher efficiency pv ce…
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I like this argument but I disagree with it. I will stipulate that PG&E qualifies as a 'poorly run, centralized utility' and based on its billing it cannot provide power to residential homes for less money than a locally installed solar system can. The reasons for this are worth considering. PG&E has to maintain a power transmission infrastructure. That infrastructure has a high inspection cost, land use cost, equipm…
Oh, don't get me wrong - solar power generation is fantastic in areas that can support it (Which is most of the world.) Rooftop solar power generation is what I have an issue with. Utility-scale solar has all the advantage that you cited, without the disadvantages of being incredibly labour-intensive, overcomplicating the electric grid, and offloading long-term maintenance to non-experts. If you are going 100% off-th…
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How do you calculate savings at the 11-year mark? If you'd invested the same amount in index funds over an 11 year period you'd see your money double in an approximately 10 year period.
We have kept records of the power we've consumed, the power we've generated, the cost of the system and the cost of repairs/maintenance (one panel and one inverter so far over its lifetime). For the financial analysis we assumed the money would be committed to paying for power one way or the other, there isn't really an option for putting it aside in the mutual fund so the 'invest' option was off the table. With the…
When you get down into the meat of how the tax credits and Sunrun's financing work it's astonishing. Essentially it sounds like Sunrun's investors are paying to install solar panels on your house so they can claim the tax credit to offset their own income. Meanwhile you are paying Sunrun for the electricity generated by the solar panels. There doesn't seem to be much benefit for the homeowner. You're better off buyin…
There's clearly not much benefit, if they sold him on saving a mere $23 per month.
Here's a cautionary tale of purchasing a home with solar panels, even if they're not leased from a third party. We bought a house with solar panels in 2016. The seller had purchased the system less than a year before the house went on the market, and one of the key selling points was that there was no lease to deal with; by purchasing the home, we would 100% own the solar panels and would reap all the benefits of wha…